


Small-Town Girl (from down Miskatonic County way)

by TardisIsTheOnlyWayToTravel



Series: Small-Town Girl [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012), Thor (2011)
Genre: F/M, Humour, Lovecraftian, No Sex, Tentacles, but no spoilers except for Winter Soldier's identity, winter soldier - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-05
Updated: 2014-04-05
Packaged: 2018-01-18 06:14:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1418038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TardisIsTheOnlyWayToTravel/pseuds/TardisIsTheOnlyWayToTravel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the most part, Darcy looked completely human. Unfortunately, the tentacles were anything but.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Small-Town Girl (from down Miskatonic County way)

**Author's Note:**

> Almost a damn year I've been working on this one. _Horrible_ case of writer's block. It's still far from perfect, but it will _do._

** Small-Town Girl (from down Miskatonic County way) **

Not all that long before Jane (and thus Darcy) was sent to Tromso, Erik Selvig asked Darcy a question.

“I have wondered for a while now,” he said thoughtfully, while Jane ordered them more drinks from the bar, “why you seemed so ready to believe that Thor was indeed a god.”

Darcy was used to Erik asking insightful questions, but even so, that one was kind of a stunner. She stared into her glass and tried to collect her thoughts.

“You never saw anything weird in your life that made you think that the world was different to how you thought it was?” she asked finally.

Erik snorted with dry humour.

“Well, now I have,” he admitted.

Darcy wondered what to say next.

“I grew up with weirdness,” she finally decided on, “so it didn’t seem all that improbable to me.”

She could have said _my grandmother was from Miskatonic county,_ or _seeing me naked makes everyone reconsider their worldview_ , but she didn’t.

Curled up against her back in a way that defied physics, her tentacles twitched restlessly.

* * *

The thing was, gods like Thor? They were kind of the new kids on the block. Sure, they seemed pretty impressive, to people from Earth who weren’t used to gods, but when you came down to it, they weren’t really much more than mojo-ed up aliens.

But there were other gods, Old Ones, who could warp and twist reality as they wanted; incomprehensible, wonderful horrors far beyond human understanding. Generally worlds like Earth were so far beneath their attention as to escape notice. Sometimes, though, an exceptionally weird or open-minded or just plain unlucky human had an encounter with them at the right (i.e _so, so wrong_ ) time, and someone came out of it pregnant.

Darcy’s grandmother had apparently been one of the weird ones. Darcy’s father had turned out fine, a normal, unremarkable specimen of a human being, but Darcy herself? The obstetrician had taken a good look at what Darcy’s mom had given birth to, and run screaming from the delivery room.

For the most part, Darcy looked completely human. Unfortunately, the tentacles were anything but.

* * *

While Jane and Darcy were stuck in Tromso, aliens invaded, were defeated by a bunch of superheroes, Thor returned to Earth and left again, and Agent Coulson was killed in action.

Darcy was pissed at the other stuff, but she wasn’t sure how to feel about the last part. It wasn’t that she particularly _liked_ Coulson or anything; she still hadn’t forgiven him for her iPod and Jane’s research. But he’d been kind of ridiculously imperturbable, and Darcy had liked to imagine how he might have looked if he’d seen her tentacles.

Darcy wasn’t sure which she would have liked to see more: Agent iPod Thief gaping in shock, his usual iron composure gone, or him keeping his cool even in the face of unexpected appendages. Either one would have been epic, she was sure.

The dude who had replaced Coulson as the guy who read all Jane’s reports, on the other hand? Sitwell scowled a lot, and didn’t have even half Coulson’s unflappability, and Darcy would sure that if _he_ saw her tentacles he’d either scream like a girl or resort to panicked cursing, or both.

It made her feel a little sad.

* * *

The good thing about working in New York? Avengers.

Thor came back to Earth again after a couple of months, and he and Jane were joyfully reunited, and Jane was invited to move into Avengers Tower with him. Somehow Darcy got an invitation, too (although she got her own room, obviously, because otherwise it would have been weird) which was how she ended up sharing space with a bunch of superheroes.

Darcy still couldn’t make up her mind about Tony Stark. Half the time she liked him okay, but the other half she wanted to taze him in the balls.

Darcy shared this observation with Natasha. Darcy should really have been politely avoiding Natasha on the grounds that she was dangerous as shit and didn’t pull her punches (both metaphorically and literally), but a certain part of Darcy’s makeup found people who could kill you easily and in violently creative ways immensely attractive. Not that Darcy swung that way, but wow.

Natasha shrugged a bit.

“It’s part of the Tony Stark experience. Ask Pepper.”

Darcy did ask Pepper, whose face morphed into the most ridiculous combination of fondness and serious exasperation when Darcy asked. She confirmed that Darcy’s experience wasn’t unusual, so Darcy decided that yeah, she liked Tony, but not when he was a dick.

She got along well enough with the rest of the Avengers. She knew Thor already, of course, and Captain America was punctiliously polite, bless him. She didn’t interact with Dr Banner or Clint that much – although Clint could be pretty funny when he wanted to be – and Natasha was Natasha. Darcy settled in pretty comfortably, and everything seemed to be going swimmingly.

And then, it turned out that Agent Coulson wasn’t dead, after all.

Clint took it pretty hard, and shut himself up on the shooting range for like two days and refused to talk to anybody. Natasha carved what was probably her name in Russian on all the countertops and wooden furniture. Dr Banner mostly seemed uncomfortable with the deception, while Captain America looked disappointed at Fury over it. Tony, meanwhile, ranted and raved a lot, but finished with a ‘good to see you’re alive, Agent,’ that probably indicated that Coulson was forgiven.

Darcy just eyed the way he was standing so that he subtly favoured one side over the other and the fine lines of pain around his eyes and asked, “You want some coffee?”

“God, yes,” he replied, and so Darcy asked the magical coffee machine to make them each espressos.

Darcy saw him around a lot, after that; the Avengers had apparently decided that as an honorary Avenger Coulson ought to live with them. (It was at about this time Darcy started calling him Phil.) Even after he recovered enough to return to work, Darcy still frequently found herself in the same room with him.

Phil was off the clock was actually good company, Darcy discovered. He had a wry, understated sense of humour, and a streak of smartassery that took her by surprise.

The first she saw of this was not long after he first moved in, when everyone was trying to convince The Amazing Hawkeye to show them some tricks.

“I am not your personal circus performer, Jesus,” Hawkeye proclaimed loudly.

“You should do that thing where you shoot smiley faces in the targets, the crowds love that one,” Phil said, from where he was sitting watching. (Just in time to forestall Tony’s _‘actually, I’m a Stark, but I can see how you might have trouble telling the difference’_ joke that Darcy could totally see coming. Tony had his mouth open and everything.)

Clint gave Coulson a friendly sort of glare.

“Screw you, sir.”

“I’ve been banned from physical exertion, Barton, and I’m afraid you’re not really my type,” Phil retorted seamlessly, and Clint snorted.

“Uh, what?” Dr Banner blinked owlishly.

“Phil’s a smartass,” Natasha explained, watching Clint and Phil with an expression that in anyone else might almost have been called fondness. Darcy resisted the reflexive urge to offer her food, which was sort of a tentacled courtship thing – Natasha was gorgeous, sure, but seriously, _no._ Not going there, primitive hindbrain.

“Seriously?” Tony was gaping. Darcy took a picture, because she could. No one seemed to notice. Darcy sent the photo to Coulson on the grounds that he might appreciate it.

Coulson frowned, and pulled his phone out of his pocket to peer at the screen. He pressed a couple of buttons, and the frown gave way to something lighter. His lips twitched.

He looked up and nodded at Darcy in thanks, giving a small smile. Darcy grinned back at him.

So okay, maybe she thought Coulson was alright. Who knew he had a sense of humour?

* * *

“So,” said Tony one day, “I get why Foster gets to live in the superhero clubhouse, but seriously, why are _you_ here? I never actually asked. I mean you’re not exactly the superhero type.”

“Shut up, I am secretly badass,” Darcy announced, insulted.

“Sure you are,” Stark said condescendingly.

“Dude, I tased a _god_ ,” Darcy declared, straightening to her full height, her tentacles twitching in indignation beneath her jacket. “If magic powers and godlike muscles were what it took to be a superhero, you wouldn’t be here either.” She sniffed disdain. “Let me guess, you read a lot of Batman comics as a child, didn’t you.”

“Excuse me?” Tony’s eyebrows flew up, and he looked more bewildered than insulted. Point to Darcy. “I am so much better than Batman.”

“Hah!” Darcy pointed a triumphant finger at him. “You _did!_ Confess! You totally wanted to be Batman, I _knew_ it.” Darcy pumped her fist in the air.

Tony just stared in bemusement.

“You are a strange woman, you know that?”

“The term’s _eccentric_ , and you so do not have room to talk,” Darcy replied.

“True,” Tony admitted, tilting his head in acknowledgement. “You really tased a god?”

“Yup. Knocked Thor flat on his ass,” Darcy said proudly.

“Indeed!” Thor boomed from the doorway. “Despite her small stature, Lady Darcy wields a most powerful weapon!”

Darcy narrowed her eyes.

“Hey, who do you think you’re calling small, pal?”

Thor just chuckled fondly, and began to make pop-tarts.

“One at a time, one at a time!” Tony said urgently, as Thor went to shove a handful of poptarts into a single toaster slot. 

“So _that’s_ why the toaster’s always catching fire,” Darcy said in realisation.

“Dammit, Thor, how many times do I have to tell you?” Tony groaned. “ _One_ poptart in the toaster slots at any given time. God.”

Darcy grinned, and left them to it.

* * *

Dealing with SHIELD, on the other hand, _wasn’t_ a good thing. Darcy didn’t mind Coulson – kind of liked him, even – but the rest of SHIELD? They could go screw themselves. 

The worst of them all was the Director. He was the one responsible for hiding the fact that Coulson was alive, and while okay, being Director had to be a pretty tough job, some of the calls he made weren’t cool.

Darcy told him as much, one time when he was at the Tower. Fury just looked unimpressed.

“I do the best on the information we have, Ms Lewis,” he said, eyeballing her, like she was supposed to be intimidated by this or something. “Which, I would like to point out, is more information than anyone else has access to.”

Darcy scowled, irked.

“Please, like you guys know everything. Yeah, right. I bet there’s plenty of stuff you miss. That’s part of the problem. I mean come on, I bet you don’t even know the most important stuff about _me_ , and I’m just Jane’s assistant.”

Fury eyeballed her some more, in a way that was almost pitying.

“You think that there’s anything we don’t know about you?”

“Sometimes I get this urge to snatch pigeons out of the air and eat them,” said Darcy. It was one of those things that came with her weird heritage, one of the strange instincts her tentacles operated by. Darcy mostly ignored it, although there were a few drunken memories she really wished she could expunge forever.

She had the private satisfaction of seeing Fury actually blink.

“I stand corrected. Perhaps you should consider seeing a psychiatrist, Ms Lewis. Regardless, everything of importance that there is to know about you, SHIELD is aware of.”

Thinking of her tentacles, Darcy had trouble keeping a straight face.

“Right. Sure. Go right ahead and think that.”

Fury gave her a long look, but Darcy just gave him an innocent look that made his eyes narrow. 

Sauntering away, Darcy smirked to herself. Yeah. SHIELD had no clue whatsoever.

* * *

Darcy was feeling hungry, but unfortunately, getting a quick snack was proving harder than she’d thought it would be.

Darcy stared upwards in frustration, and wondered what bastard had put the cookies on the top shelf. She could either climb the shelves, or…

“Hey JARVIS, there any cameras in the pantry cupboard?”

“There are not, Miss Lewis.”

“Thanks.” Darcy shut the pantry door and whipped out a tentacle, and reached up to grab the packet of cookies. The tentacle slid back under her clothes barely half a second before someone opened the pantry door. Darcy jumped guiltily.

Phil raised an eyebrow, looking quizzical, so, “I’m stealing the cookies!” Darcy blurted. “Want to help?”

“This seems like a transparent attempt to buy my silence,” Phil observed.

“Is it working?” Darcy asked, relieved that her excuse was apparently believable.

Phil glanced at the cookies.

“What kind are they?”

“Uh, choc-coated wafers with chocolate-cream filling.”

“Then we have a deal,” Phil agreed.

They ended up sitting out on the rooftop balcony, looking out at the skyline and eating the cookies.

“Can you really kill a man with a paperclip?” Darcy asked, apropos of nothing.

Phil gave a long-suffering sigh.

“I did that _once_ ,” he answered.

“Cool,” said Darcy, and instinctively offered him the cookie packet. He took one, and Darcy thought, _oh, shit._

“It was rather unpleasant, actually,” said Phil, unaware that Darcy had done something out of the ordinary.

“Sorry. Think of cookies instead, maybe?” Darcy suggested.

“Is that your usual strategy?” Phil asked, his tone lightly teasing.

“Mostly I think of chocolate,” Darcy admitted honestly. That earned her a quirk of a smile, and she smiled back. “You know, I don’t think I ever said, but I’m glad you aren’t dead,” Darcy told him. “Sitwell was easy to freak out, it was sad. Also, you’re pretty cool when you’re not being an iPod stealing hardass.”

Phil blinked and smiled again, looking faintly amused.

“Thanks.”

There was a gentle silence, as Phil looked out at the skyline and Darcy sent him sideways looks. Sure, he wasn’t bad-looking, in a middle-aged, bland suit kind of way, and he was definitely deadly enough (when he wanted to be) to impress that side of her, but still, Darcy wouldn’t have thought he was her type. Sure, she liked him, but until now it hadn’t occurred to her that maybe she _liked_ him. But she’d gone ahead and offered him food, totally on instinct, and there was no denying what that meant. And now that the idea was in her head, Darcy thought that no, he really wasn’t that unattractive. Darcy would totally go there, if she thought he was interested.

Phil glanced at her inquiringly, and Darcy realised that he’d caught her sideways looks. She shrugged.

“Sorry. Still thinking about the paperclip story. Got any more stories like that?”

Phil smiled. It was an enigmatic, mysterious smile that told her nothing, and the bastard knew it, too.

“I’m sorry, Miss Lewis. But that’s classified.”

Darcy rolled her eyes.

“Whatever. And it’s Darcy, not Miss Lewis. I mean come on, we live in the same building and everything, no need to be so formal.”

“Darcy, then,” Phil corrected himself, his eyes warm and amused. It was a good look on him. He glanced at his watch, and the warm and amused look faded back into the bland Agent Coulson face he usually wore. “I’m afraid I have a meeting to get to. Thank you for including me in your cookie theft.”

“Anytime,” said Darcy. She watched him walk back inside, and sighed.

Yeah. She definitely _liked_ him. Dammit.

* * *

Given her life, it made sense that Darcy wouldn’t be able to hide what she was forever.

It happened when the Tower was attacked by HYDRA and a pitched battle was going on in the hallways, while Darcy tried to avoid being shot or bludgeoned and wondered how, yet again, she’d managed to get stuck in the middle of this kind of situation. The Avengers and Phil were all fighting the HYDRA soldiers, and seemed to be doing pretty well, although they kept yelling at Darcy to get out of the way, even though there was _nowhere else for her to go._ Not that she wasn’t trying. Being stuck in the middle of a firefight wasn’t her idea of fun.

Darcy would have continued to try and stay out of the way except that behind Phil one of the HYDRA goons readied his gun and aimed, straight at the side of Phil’s head, clearly planning to put a bullet through his skull.

Darcy knew that Phil wasn’t going to be able to dodge it, knew that before anyone could even warn him it would be too late, and saw _red._

Without her conscious control tentacles whipped out, flung themselves around their target and crushed his head like an egg.

Darcy realised what she’d done, and let go. The goon’s broken body dropped to the floor.

“Oh, _gross_ ,” she complained, at the gore on her tentacles, and wiped them on the dead guy’s shirt.

She realised that all activity had stopped, and everyone, HYDRA goons and Avengers alike, were staring at her.

“What?” she said defensively, even as her stomach clenched in fear at the expressions on their faces. “I told you I was secretly badass.”

“ _Tentacles,_ ” Tony said faintly. Darcy narrowed her eyes at him.

“If you’re thinking of some weird sex thing, the answer is no.”

Both Tony and Steve choked at the same time. Darcy hoped it was for different reasons.

She couldn’t resist any longer, and glanced at Phil. He looked surprised, but not horrified. As Darcy watched, he put his reaction aside and went back to beating up bad guys.

It didn’t take long to subdue the remaining goons: they all seemed to be in shock at their buddy’s fate. Darcy guessed it wasn’t every day they saw an innocent-looking twenty-something suddenly sprout tentacles and kill a dude.

“Darcy Lewis,” Thor said sombrely. Even he looked a little disturbed. “You are of the lineage of an Elder God.”

“Granddaughter,” Darcy agreed, and patted him comfortingly on the shoulder with a tentacle. Thor’s eyes went way sideways so he could watch it warily, so Darcy stopped.

“Shellhead, I’m raiding your liquor cabinet, and no force in the verse is going to stop me,” Clint announced firmly.

Natasha said something in Russian that looked like wholehearted agreement.

* * *

“So,” Phil said later, when he’d debriefed everyone else, and it was just him and Darcy in his office. “Tentacles.” His expression was mildly interested.

“You want to see them?” Darcy asked.

“If it isn’t too personal.” There was genuine curiosity on Phil’s face.

“Nah, it’s fine.” Darcy let a couple of tentacles slip free of her clothes, and waved them lazily at Phil.

He regarded them with fascination.

“Can I touch them?” he asked quietly.

“Knock yourself out,” Darcy replied.

Phil’s fingers were hard and cool, and he touched the nearest tentacle with unexpected gentleness. Darcy shivered at the sensation.

Phil immediately drew his hand back, and Darcy reached out and curled a tentacle around it.

“It’s fine,” she assured him. “Just sensitive. You can touch, really.”

She let go of Phil’s hand, and after a moment, he went back to his gentle inspection.

“You aren’t used to people touching them,” he observed, examining the tip of the nearest tentacle. Darcy gave a wry laugh.

“Yeah, no, usually people run screaming, except for the one guy who had a weird fetish, and _ew_ , you would not believe what he wanted me to do with them, it was gross. Even my parents… well, it was one thing to be told by your crazy mother-slash-mother-in-law that she had a kid with an Old One, and a totally different thing altogether to have a kid with tentacles. My mom divorced my dad over it she was so freaked, and I don’t see her that often, while my dad… he likes to pretend, you know, that we’re just an ordinary family. So yeah, I’m not used to people touching them. Even my folks pretend they don’t exist.”

Phil listened to Darcy’s explanation with a look in his eyes, half-soft, half-angry, that made Darcy’s heart beat faster.

“Although, my stepsister says I give the best hugs,” Darcy added. “On the rare occasion I can do that without anybody seeing.”

“I think they’re remarkable,” Phil said sincerely, and Darcy felt the blush bloom across her cheeks, and watched with resignation as her tentacles turned faintly purple. Phil looked at them in surprise, and then back at Darcy.

“Your tentacles blush?” 

“Shut up,” Darcy ordered. Phil only made a vaguely amused sound, smiling at her. There was a long, warm silence. Darcy’s tentacle curled around his hand again. Phil didn’t seem to mind.

“I apologise in advance if I’m reading things wrong,” Phil said after a moment, and Darcy’s heart started beating faster, “but would you like to get dinner, sometime?”

“Yeah,” Darcy said, and couldn’t help the smile that broke out, “I really would. I kind of like you a lot.”

Phil smiled.

“The feeling’s mutual then.” He hesitated. “How do you feel about tomorrow at seven? There’s a good little Thai place I know, if you’re interested.”

“Done,” Darcy said immediately. The two of them smiled at each other.

“Elder Gods,” Phil said thoughtfully, after a moment. “We’re probably going to need a briefing on that.”

Darcy made a face.

“What’s there to know? Lovecraft got most of the facts right, although the tone of his works is really bigoted against people like me, FYI.”

“All the same,” Phil said, “I’m going to ask you to give a briefing to myself and the Director, as soon as possible. This is information we need to be reliably informed of.”

Darcy perked up.

“I get to brief Fury? Hah. I told him SHIELD didn’t know the important things about me.”

“Apparently you were right,” said Phil. “I’m sure you’ll have fun rubbing it in.”

“Yeah,” said Darcy. “Listen, do I need to do any paperwork for this? Because I figured, you’ve been debriefing everyone for like two hours, and I’ve been waiting, so we could both probably use a coffee.”

Phil smiled.

“That sounds like an excellent idea.” He stood, and shrugged on his suit jacket. “Shall we?”

“Yeah,” Darcy grinned. “Let’s go get caffeined-up.”

They walked down to the local coffee shop together, and Darcy figured that the big reveal had ended up going a lot better than she could have hoped. After all, she’d never expected to get a date out of it. 

The others would come around eventually, she was pretty sure. For now, she’d just enjoy the moment.

* * *

It took the Avengers a while to get used to the idea that Darcy’s grandparent (because she was pretty sure that Old Ones were above gender) was a genuine Lovecraftian Elder God. Tony kept asking intrusive questions while Bruce sighed but looked curious in the background, and the rest of the Avengers seemed wary, especially Thor, who had a better idea of what Old Ones were like than his team-mates. And Steve, who’d been brought up a good God-fearing Catholic, seemed downright horrified.

Still, all of them adjusted eventually. It helped that Darcy managed to neutralise an assassin who’d broken into the Tower by the simple method of grabbing each of his limbs with a different tentacle and holding him up in the air so that he couldn’t do anything.

“JARVIS,” Darcy said loudly, as the assassin struggled, “can you wake the others, please?”

“Of course, Miss Lewis,” said JARVIS politely.

The Avengers were all congratulating Darcy and wondering what to do with the increasingly angry-looking assassin when Steve walked in, took one look at the guy, blanched white and said, “ _Bucky?_ ”

“Wait,” said Tony, who seemed to understand Steve’s cryptic utterance, “ _what?_ ”

After that, there were suddenly more important things to think about than Darcy’s weird ancestry, which suited her just fine. After all, it wasn’t like Darcy was the strangest person in the world.

Tentacles notwithstanding. 

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Small-Town Girl (the older than you think remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5947477) by [TardisIsTheOnlyWayToTravel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TardisIsTheOnlyWayToTravel/pseuds/TardisIsTheOnlyWayToTravel)
  * [From Down Miskatonic County Way (the secret agent remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6115584) by [TardisIsTheOnlyWayToTravel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TardisIsTheOnlyWayToTravel/pseuds/TardisIsTheOnlyWayToTravel)




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